Sunday, July 18, 2021

YES, The Holy Father Will Try to Suppress the Traditional Mass. War Has Been Declared.

 

Well, now we have the answer to the question I asked last month.  Besides saying I stand by everything I said last month, I will add the following observations:

- The blow, once landed, does not hurt any less just because you saw it coming.  This is no surprise.  Still, it may be that the biggest shock is how utterly devoid of even a scintilla of human empathy the document is.  It doesn’t even have a grace period before taking effect.

- It’s unfortunate that some people think this move by the Pope was justified and proportionate to the alleged provocation.  For decades, and especially over the last year and a half, we have been inured to exercises of raw power and draconian overreactions by those in authority, so that we have lost our sense of how wrong it is to depart from legitimate authority and proportionality.  We have also lost our sense of what an evil thing it is to try to stamp out the time-honored and tested Mass that has nurtured generation upon generation of saints.  It was an evil the first time around, and it is no less evil this time.

- Power and authority are not ends in themselves, but means to ends.  An exercise of power and authority that is destructive of the ends for which they were instituted is an abuse.  The end for which the Catholic Church was founded is the salvation of souls.  There is no sense in which the salvation of souls has been served here.

- This Orwellianly-titled motu proprio couldn’t be further beyond the Pope’s authority.  I can’t think that anyone is really bound to obey it, even if it weren’t full of things that don’t make sense.  Bishops should recognize it as the usurpation that it is.

- Let’s be clear about who is responsible for divisions in the Church.  It’s not the people who want to stick to tradition.  It’s the revolutionaries in the Church who think she is their personal property to do with as they please, and who try to transform her into something unrecognizable from what she had previously been.  In fact, those who govern the Church do not own tradition, but only hold it in trust.  These prelates and priests who cannot leave well enough alone are violating their obligation to keep care of the patrimony that has been entrusted to them, so that the present generation may enjoy the benefits of peace and order, and so that it will be there for future generations.  They are also violating their obligation not to put their flocks in a position of having to choose between obedience to them and obedience to God.  

- The enemies of the Church, both within and without, hate not only the Mass, but the papacy.  In our time, this would seem to include the current holder of that office.  He demonstrated that early on with his disdain for the customs and trappings and small “t” traditions that come with it.  Then there was his belittlement of the papacy by his continued promotion of “collegiality,” and his use of its prestige to make common cause with globalist leftists against the flocks he was appointed to protect.  Now there is this frontal assault on the Church herself, using his power as Supreme Pontiff to destroy what his predecessor built and to eviscerate the patrimony he is bound to defend.  These are all attacks on the primacy of Peter.  If you really hate the papacy, and want to bring it into disrepute and ultimately destroy it, what better place to try to do it from than the throne itself?

- Still, no: this move by Pope Francis does not prove he is an antipope.  If God demonstrates his wrath against His people by allowing them to fall into the hands of bad priests, as St. John Eudes says, how much more wrathful must He be to allow us to fall into the hands of bad bishops, and, above all, a bad Pope?  There have certainly been plenty of candidates in recent decades.  Pope Francis is a typical cleric of his generation: mean, nasty, arrogant, brutal, and contemptuous of all things Catholic.  The hierarchy is still chock-a-block with guys like him.  It was only a question of time before one of them landed his kiester on the throne of Peter.

- From what I am seeing on social media, the lumpen cruelty of Friday’s bombshell shocks the conscience, not only of die-hard Latin Mass-goers, but also Catholics who only attend the Novus Ordo, and even some non-Catholics.  It’s impossible at this early stage to know how many people who don’t think they have a dog in the fight have been shocked by this, but it’s possible the Pope has jumped the shark.  (I say “don’t think they have a dog in the fight,” because really, there is no one who does not have a stake in the preservation of the Mass of tradition.)

- I expect that the Society of St. Pius X will keep on keeping on, as they have been doing since they were founded in the 1970s.  I also expect they will have a lot more souls on their hands after this, over and above the increase they got out of the covid shutdowns.  Their uncompromising stance in favor of tradition is looking less and less like “disobedience” and “schism” and “rebellion” as more and more “Spirit of Vatican II” chickens come home to roost.  Their canonically irregular situation — which they acknowledge as an abnormality, and hope one day to be able to rectify — is also, in the present moment, looking more and more providential, as it allows them to plant standards pretty much anywhere, and to marshal resources that no bishop can strip them of.

While we wear out our Rosary beads, stock up on our supply of sacramentals, and go to confession and receive Holy Communion as often as possible, we need to stay sane inside insanity and remember that this ain’t 1970 anymore.  The traditional Mass parishes are loaded with babies and toddlers and young adults too young to have boomer and Gen X baggage.  They are where the future is.  Also, in 1970, we hadn’t had 2020 yet.  People noticed which sector of the clergy defended their flocks in 2020, and which didn’t.  

Above all, this is God’s Church.  Sooner or later, He will intervene.

2 comments:

  1. This was one of my first thoughts when I read the MP; that the SSPX will be the warriors in this battle- and battle it is.
    I hope the FSSP stand strong, and all who love and attend the TLM will pray for an end to this attempt to strip us of our right to attend the MAss of the ages.
    I am so tired of the coruption and manipulation. I bet God is too.

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